


Abyss Fading

by Oh_Toasty



Series: 500 Words [10]
Category: The Umbrella Academy, The Umbrella Academy (TV)
Genre: Angry Number Five, Character Study, Gen, Number Five | The Boy (Umbrella Academy) Has PTSD - Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder, Number Five | The Boy-centric, POV Number Five | The Boy (Umbrella Academy), he’s working through some shit, no beta we die like ben
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-07-16
Updated: 2019-07-16
Packaged: 2020-06-29 10:17:57
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 500
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19828096
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Oh_Toasty/pseuds/Oh_Toasty
Summary: It feels as though there’s a gaping maw within him, one that consumes his emotions until all that is left is an all consuming anger.





	Abyss Fading

**Author's Note:**

> Five has to be so messed up

It’s the consistency of his anger that scares him. The way that it’s always there, simmering in the background, even in what he now deems the good days.

It scares him in a way at the apocalypse never quite did; it scares him in a way only something he can’t solve could. 

As a child, a real one, not what he is now, a man in a child’s body, he’d often been put to task solving problems. Refining his jumps had taken equation after equation, and figuring out how to give back to his family without, well, being caught caring, used to fill his time. He used to be able to stumble his way through each day without acknowledging how lost he truly is. 

In the apocalypse, it had been much the same. He had been lost, utterly so, but he’s also had distractions that would never exist here. Here, now, there is no need to build up his food reserves, to hoard non-perishables. There is nothing distracting him from how unfamiliar he is with this world. 

He cannot fight the rage that follows him through his day. The anger that permeates every moment. 

Five counts his siblings when they are all together, checking that they haven’t died while he was gone (he will never forgive himself for being away, even if that saved them in the end). Every time he comes up one short, every time he is reminded that he was not there for Ben, every time he hurts a little more. (Why couldn’t he have come back sooner? Why couldn’t he have saved Ben from the fate he’d read about in Vanya’s book) The anger grows as well. 

There are days when he wants nothing more than to be normal, days when he dreams of life as a fifty-eight year old man. He’s always furious when he recalls that it’ll never be, at least not for a long while. 

He cannot even get a cup of coffee without people asking about his parents, and that most of all angers him. He survived for over forty years in an apocalyptic wasteland, he can kill a man with barely a twitch of his muscles, and yet. 

Some times, he can wield the anger as a tool. He uses it to fuel his missions for the day, whether it be more calculations (preparation, he cannot guarantee the future, and if time travel is needed again he’d like to stay in his body), or getting through whatever family bonding experience he’s dragged to. 

Other days, the anger runs through his body, an uncontrolled wildfire and eats him up from the inside out. He devours friendly words and ideas, and spits them out with a venom unfittinging for someone who looks to be thirteen. 

Days like that, he wishes he were still in the apocalypse, at least then he’d have a purpose.

“Come on,” Vanya beckons him closer to the family, and he shakes his head clear. 

He did the right thing.


End file.
